Natural Disaster
by Kaitsy
Summary: Summer returns home months after Marissa's death to fix things. There is a morbid bond between Ryan and herself now and she seeks him out to find comfort. More friendship focused than romance. Slightly AU.


**So, this is ever so slightly AU with the faintest suggestion of Summer/Ryan...stuff. It's set, well...The episode that Summer comes home from Brown and goes to Ryan, it's at that time. But. With some changes, haha. She goes to Ryan _before_ seeing Seth and then, well, let's say she goes back to Ryan and convinces him to go home. Er, it doesn't have to make sense. This was a guilty pleasure of mine for a long time and I just finally got around to writing some Summer/Ryan type stuff. Review if you'd like. I just had fun writing it. Oh and it's pretty much depressing and focused on Marissa. There you go. **

**Abc.**

Summer Roberts had changed. Marissa had died and college had came and Seth had stayed and – yes, it was safe to say that Summer Roberts had changed.

The environment and animals and oceans and recycling were all things she truly cared about. It occurred to her at Brown what they were doing to the world, what she had been doing the world. Since Marissa's death, she had this whole detached view of things. It was as if she was recalling her life and seeing it played for her as a film, highlighting key moments for her.

She had been a bitch. She had been a mean, selfish bitch – it started around seventh grade, she thought, when the label on her clothes became more important than the grades she received. It was not a quick, short phase. It had lasted. It lasted years.

It lasted until Chino came.

When she thought of him it always brought a smile to her, how automatically she thought of him as Chino or Atwood and how automatically she thought of him as Marissa's. He had been Marissa's before Marissa even knew it. He was Marissa's even in her death and Summer felt sorry for Chino – Summer felt sorry for the Ryan Atwood that had became the love of her best friend's life in a couple of short years. She did not know how to tell him she felt sorry for him.

Summer didn't think it would matter. Ryan wasn't the type who was really accepting and welcoming of pity. Not the type to put himself before others and she also admired him. Summer didn't know how to say much to Ryan.

Her struggle with Seth was her own private battle, between mourning Marissa's death and trying to save the ice caps from melting. Or something like that.

She loved him, she did but he was stuck and she was perpetually evolving and growing and changing, trying to find her niche. Trying to get back to herself. She was not certain who that person was anymore – she or Seth. She didn't know him like she knew him, she didn't know herself like she knew herself.

The only other person who could possibly understand was Ryan. It was strange for her to pick up her phone sometimes late at night and she would think – okay, it's only nine in Newport, I'll just call him now, he'll be around –

Summer, she'd say to herself, this is Chino you're thinking about.

Her love and appreciation and connection with Seth, she assumed, only should've became stronger after Marissa died. She was her best friend and to lose that, well, Seth was really all she had. And she knew to see the loss that Ryan had experienced should've taught her to hold on to those she loved. She knew she should've been treating Seth better. She knew she should go home to him and look into his eyes and find herself and get back to her roots.

That reminded her of her long grown out highlights and her split ends and, like, she had never been so pale in her life. East coast lovin', she thought, one rainy night. Sometimes when it rained she thought of Seth and Spiderman masks and hanging from roofs but then she'd think of Ryan because the rain made her feel lonely and she thought Ryan must always be lonely.

Her preoccupation with Ryan and how he was doing gave her something to think of besides Marissa laying in a casket, looking beautiful and cold. Her hair had been wavy like it was after it got wet. Her cheekbones were highlighted with pale blush and Summer was like, do I have necrophilia because I think her skin feels softer than when she was alive? Ryan had not even come to her funeral and funeral? Marissa was dead? Sometimes Summer felt she was crazy when it hit her like that.

Summer had changed and yeah, she was kind of dark now. Whatever, recycle your shit and save the world, okay?

Ryan had left the Cohen's after Marissa had, well, died in his arms. Summer didn't really blame him. She fled to Brown and Ryan fled to...become a cage fighter?

"What?" She said to Seth when he told her and she laughed as he repeated himself. The phone crackled and static muffled his sigh. The connection was bad. Though, more than just the phone connection was bad.

"Summer, it's serious. He's a _total_ masochist now. Killing himself because he couldn't save her."

He couldn't save Marissa and Ryan had been saving Marissa for so long that Summer agreed – he probably hated himself for not being able to save her. For letting her be with Volchok and the Johnny drama and Ryan probably wished he could've done something before she, well, destroyed herself. She destroyed herself. Summer knew that much.

She fought her own demons late at night, alone in the dorm – because her roommate was a major whore and never came home – as she tried to sleep and all she could see was an overdosed Marissa in Tijuana, passed out in a dirty alley. And all she could see was a drunk Marissa or a hung-over Marissa and it was there stuck in the back of her mind –

_You should've done something. She was your _best friend, _you should've saved her life._

Summer thought – she was so certain that if she was struggling so horribly with suffocating guilt, then Ryan – _Ryan_...

She really could not imagine how he was dealing with it, how he was surviving so alone. She wondered if he worried about her like she did him. She thought that maybe now they had some morbid bond and she felt like she needed to see him, needed to talk to him and ask him if some days he felt like just closing his eyes and never waking up again and being able to see Marissa.

Some days Summer felt that way.

Another laugh left her lips during that conversation with Seth and it was like this slow descent into a sob and they were quiet for a long time.

"Are you going to be okay, Summer?"

The clock showed midnight and she chewed her lip, laying on her bed.

"Listen, Seth," soft and quiet and trying but failing to explain or offer some reassurance to him, to herself. She wanted to tell him that everything was going to be fine but she just needed some time, just needed her heart to heal. And she wanted him to be there, she really did.

His phone beeped and interrupted her second attempt with words.

"Dammit, Summer, my phone's,-" It beeped again. His phone was dying, battery failing and so were they, so were them.

"Dying. Okay." He might've said goodbye before it cut him off but she hung up and went to sleep.

She was going home to Newport the next day.

**Abc.**

The flight there was long and she knew she looked differently, dressed differently and she wasn't even really thinking of seeing Seth or her dad or Julie.

She was going to see Ryan first.

Seth hadn't, like, asked her to come home and save the family or something definitely dramatic like that. She just had this horrible feeling about Ryan and – she really didn't want to think about it. She really didn't want him to harm himself any more because of his grief.

She stopped thinking about it and just closed her eyes and waited to arrive in sunny California and when she did she called a cab, made a couple of stops, and then went to the dank hole that Ryan was working in by day and fighting in by night. Oh, and where he lived.

"In back." the rough looking bartender said when she asked for Atwood and jabbed his thumb in the direction of a heavy door.

As Summer raised her fist to knock on the door to Ryan's swinging new bachelor pad – she wondered when she began thinking in sarcasm and yeah, Seth had his impacts – it occurred to her that perhaps Ryan had already killed Volchok and she was headed to fraternize with a murderer.

"Summer." He opened the door before she got the chance to knock. Not an edge of surprise or curiosity in his voice. Just plain and emotionless.

He stepped back and let her in as she raised the bag of bagels and the coffee in her hand.

She handed him the food and then looked around his dark, dirty room and gave a grimace of a smile.

"They played forever young and hallelujah at her funeral. They were your songs – forever young officially and hallelujah just because, I don't know, it made her think of you. She told me that."

Ryan blinked at her from across the room and shadows played over his face and um, it wasn't even noon yet there was no light in that place.

Summer shrugged and looked away from him. He blinked again and set the bagels down but began to drink the coffee.

"So, you came here to," He paused for a long moment. "tell me that?"

He murmured much of it and Summer had to move closer to make out what he was saying. He did not look at her but put the coffee down and turned away.

"No. I came here to take you home. Because, if you haven't noticed, you're living in a bar. And, like, fighting recreationally."

She put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to maybe finally look at her.

"I am home. I'm in Newport. You're the one living three-thousand miles away."

It sounded like he resented her for that fact.

"We're all," he sighed and paused and turned around but had his eyes squeezed shut as he ran his hand over his neck. "here. We all put our lives on hold after," Ryan swallowed and he looked like he was in actual physical pain to be talking, to be expressing himself.

"It happened. College is this thing from another life. Happiness is this thing..." he finally looked up and met her eyes and his were a stormy blue and not much about him did not seem stormy now. "You got to escape. But – here," he gestured between the two of them. "I am."

She threw a bagel at his head. There seemed to be little else in the place she could've used.

"I got to escape? Yeah, real party over on the east coast, you think?," she adopted the same cocky little attitude that Ryan remembered from some long-lost party at Holly's beach house and cotillion and money lost and those memories flooded him in that moment. "I've been, like, definitely miserable without her. She died, okay? Let's clear that up, we're both aware of it. Just stop pretending, Atwood. I may be the one living in Providence but you're the one running."

Summer swore at him as he remained silent.

"Rage blackouts," he recalled, no quirk of the lips or suggestion of a smile. Just a recollection from some long lost time. Ryan thought she looked skinny and sad. "I forgot."

**abc.**

She convinced him to leave his, um, house? and come with her to the room she'd gotten. At the Mermaid motel, obviously. She didn't feel like going home yet. She just wanted to mope. Summer was never really that type. So, she got her hands on a bottle of vodka and was going to forget, instead.

They drove to the motel in the jeep his mom had given him and -- "Whoa, that does seem from so long ago. Your mom. Your brother. Nice ride, Atwood," – he wore a pair of aviator shades and looked different in the harsh, bright late morning sunlight.

His eye was bruised and there were small cuts on his face and the knuckles of his right hand were huge and swollen and scabby. He wore a dark tshirt and jeans and his arm flexed as he gripped the wheel and Summer remembered she still didn't know about the Volchok situation.

So, after a few drinks and through a bout of giggles she asked him if he managed to kill him yet.

The smallest ghost of a smile graced his lips and she felt her heart pump wildly because of the alcohol in her system but god, she felt alive. He looked alive. Slight little lines around his eyes and a far off look within them but he looked better. Beat up but better.

He just shook his head and she couldn't remember at the point if he'd even spoken since they'd arrived. She felt dumb but it was liberating. Had he even drank anything yet? Ryan was the one person she'd never seen drunk or high or altered in any way. She kind of wanted to.

Ryan chewed his lip as Summer poured herself another drink and she spat it back into her glass when he said, all casual observation "just noon now."

The last thing she wanted to remind him of was his alcoholic mom – or worse, a drunken Marissa. _Marissa_. She forgot the way it felt in her mouth, on her lips – she hadn't said her name in so long.

"I miss her," he sat on the bed with his knees drawn up and his arms draped over them. He bowed his head and he spoke with such quiet desperation that Summer sobered up almost instantly. Her heart broke for him.

"I do, too. Marissa. I miss her."

He repeated the name and the way he spoke, the way it dripped from his mouth made Summer think he hadn't said it for a long time, either. They did have a morbid bond.

Summer blinked up at him from where she was flopped on the bed. When she sat up she stared at him with parted lips and messy hair and they shouldn't've been there together, she thought.

She leaned over to him and he raised his head and she pressed her lips against his maybe just hoping she'd feel something at all.

Summer had only ever wanted to kiss Ryan Atwood once before in her life. Catillion and the hot "bad boy" from Chino came back to her and yeah, she wanted to get drunk and makeout with him at that one Holly's famous parties. After that, though, it was all about Cohen and Ryan was Marissa's and okay, it wasn't like that now. Marissa was gone and Seth was, like, at a quarter-life crisis and Summer was bored. And sad. Summer had changed.

So, she kissed him that day on the bed at the Mermaid motel. She kissed her boyfriend's best friend and substitute brother and her dead best friend's boyfriend and Summer's head spun as she leaned into him. All muscle and heat and firm opposition to what she was doing.

"Summer," he said gently, grasping her arm once their lips separated and she was fluttering eyelashes and lidded eyes and pouted lips that he had no interest in. She maybe both respected and hated him in that moment. "I know you don't mean it."

She really didn't. She just thought what the hell, might as well. Perhaps she could've got lost in him, had he been willing. Or drunk. She was glad one of them was thinking straight. Even if he was a wrecked, depressed mess – he was still reasonable and rational and willing to do the right thing.

Summer didn't know how to end it. She didn't know how to walk away from him that afternoon and go back to whatever it was they had been doing. She didn't love the whole reality thing, she liked being away from it for awhile. She sat quietly, taking the position Ryan previously had, while he opted for hers and lay back on the bed, eyes closed and he confessed that he didn't sleep very much anymore.

"What are we going to do?" Summer asked more to herself than him and he did not say anything. "I just, I've been worried about you, you know? It's like..." She trailed off and sighed and her hair fell into her face.

"You're the only other one who really knows how I feel, how hard losing her was."

Julie and Kaitlin had found their own ways of dealing with it and not talking about it was one of them. Summer felt as if she were rotting from the inside out, keeping it all to herself. It was strange to realize she was capable of such an ugly feeling.

Ryan was listening, even if he wasn't talking.

"Is this," he took a shuddering breath. "The basis of the rest of our lives? Will we ever get over it?" Ryan asked and again more to himself than to Summer.

"I mean, it's like really noble that you love her, you know, even in death." Summer spoke slowly and purposefully at times and her words hung in the air, her mouth still taking the form of the last one she said.

It was not what he wanted to hear, she knew.

"Nobility is not what I'm going for right now. I just want to..."

"Move on," Summer finished. "We never will. Not really."

There was a long time in which they were quiet and the taste of alcohol lingered on Summer's tongue, within her mouth and her brown eyes looked down, never straying to him. She was nervous about how she felt.

She could hear him breathe, heavy and laboured and she raised her head and saw his chest rising and falling, both of his hands rested on his ribcage and his nostrils were flaring and his jaw was clenched and his throat working and she took a deep breath when she figured out he was struggling not to cry.

"Ryan," she exhaled and with graceful fluidity curled down beside him and put her head on his chest and gave him something besides trying not to get emotional to be preoccupied with. He adjusted himself, an arm resting on her warm back and the other in her hair. They were not who they once were. She felt so detached from herself but so comfortable, so glad to be sharing her misery with somebody. Even if he was really the last person who needed more suffering.

"I'm sorry."

He just nodded and rested his chin atop of her head. This was not her place but nor was death Marissa's and nor was faltering and stalling in life Seth's, so, well, none of them were in their right places.

There was this enlightenment, this minute in which the sunlight shone in through the gap in those tacky curtains and Summer wondered if he was remembering Theresa and Julie and Luke and every other awkward drama that had taken place at this motel. She wondered if he was remembering everything to do with Marissa. But the sunlight shone in and washed across them lying there, calming down and finding themselves and she felt incredibly optimistic and positive. Even if it was just for that minute. Even if she would never capture that feeling again – it lifted her and warmed her and Summer was hopeful, it really could not get worse.

The two of them slept and drank and ate and kissed twice more and the day ended and she left and he would not go home, so she promised she would see him around and he was leaning against the door frame of that motel as she left in a cab and was headed to her house and she felt like they were going to be okay.

Ryan waved two fingers at her as she drove away and there may have been a smile on his face.

**Abc.**


End file.
